Sunday, November 25, 2012

Gino and his team are called in to investigate the dead school girl from last episode. Noting the similarities and uncanny connection between this case and the Specimen Case, Gino decides to take Kogami off the case and assigns Akane to babysit him. Akane uses this opportunity to find out more about Sasayama and in the process learns about Makishima, the white-haired man Kogami suspects is behind many of the recent violent crimes they are investigating. Meanwhile, Oryo Rikako mourns the death of her artist father who suffered from "Serenity," an illness that made people affected by it to stop responding to external stimuli -- essentially making them the "living dead." Makishima postulates that this is the end-result of their quest to create a "perfect" society. Makishima further reveals that Rikako's penchant for mutilation is influenced by her father's morbid subjects for his painting (pictures of girls' mutilated bodies) and that she has apparently taken it upon herself to continue his work. Her most recent victim is Yoshida, with whom Rikako seems to have carried on a lesbian relationship. Rikako carries Yoshida's corpse to her school's boiler room where she quickly goes to work on her "art" with the use of a rare chemical provided to her by Makishima's henchman, Choe Gu-Sung. The next day, Gino and Yayoi find another body and it becomes clear to them that they are dealing with another serial killer. Meanwhile, a friend of Yoshida's becomes worried about her friend's disappearance. Knowing that Yoshida and Rikako were close, she decides to ask Rikako herself, only to become another victim with Rikako envisioning another "artwork" using their friendship as a subject. The girl later wakes up in the boiler room with Yoshida's corpse staring blankly at her.

COMMENTS:

This episode was full of exposition and not many things actually happen in terms of forwarding the plot. It's just Rikako committing more murders and I'm guessing the guys are going to be on to her by next episode. So far, her modus is pretty easy to follow and everything can be traced back to that girls' academy.

In other news, I'm glad they didn't drag out the whole secret behind Makishima's identity. I'm glad that they just laid it out as early as now because really I don't think this show is even about forensic investigation but about presenting a dystopian society in the guise of a procedural. This has been done a million times in shows like Ghost in the Shell and Ergo Proxy, but here, the focus seems to be on the human reaction to it.

In the worldview of Psycho-Pass, the human reaction is clearly in extremes. On the one hand, people try to conform so much to the point that they simply stop responding to stress. And on the other, people rebel by committing unheard of acts of atrocities -- the very things that the system aims to prevent. If you notice, both are adverse reactions.